Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at 5:25 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at 5:25 p.m.

Jermaine Deprie Glover, charged with the first-degree murder of his live-in girlfriend, whose body was found nude and partially burned on the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2009, entered the courtroom in a wheelchair Tuesday morning under the stony stares of the victim's family.

The prosecution contends that "pieces to a puzzle" will show 21-year-old Misty Lynn Carter was murdered by Glover, but Defense Attorney Greg Newman said she was killed by one of her massage clients.

Newman also argued that Glover, who suffers from diabetes and lost the lower half of his left leg in an amputation several years ago, could not have killed and discarded a "lady of about 200 pounds."

One of the state's first witnesses was Jerry Knaus, formerly of Fairview, who discovered Carter's body around 6:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 19, 2009 as he drove along the parkway to watch the sun rise.

Knaus told the jury that he passed the defendant as he drove up the parkway just before he found the body. He was driving a black F-150 truck. Just minutes before he saw the body, he said, he had a close call with another pickup truck.

He could not remember the color of the vehicle or its make and model, and testified that it was "pitch black" outside, but he did remember the face of the man in the other truck.

"We came not to a stop, but like ultra slow, and the person in that vehicle turned and looked straight at me," he said, adding that he was about 5 feet away and although it was "dark," headlights illuminated the man's face.

"They kind of looked right at me and I looked right at them too."

Knaus, who now lives in Port Charlotte, Fla., said a shorter passenger he could not identify was seated next to the man driving. He testified that the man behind the steering wheel looked just like the long-mustached "Poncho Villa" pictured at Papa's and Beer, a Mexican restaurant in Hendersonville.

Is the man you saw that night in the courtroom today? asked Assistant District Attorney Doug Pearson.

"Yes," Knaus testified, pointing a finger at the defendant.

Knaus said he saw Carter's body lying in a gravel pull-off area along the parkway between the bridge over Interstate 26 and the bridge over the French Broad River on his way up to Mount Pisgah from Fairview.

At first, he thought it was a deer in the road. As he drove closer, he said, he realized it was a naked female and that her head was "smoking."

After seeing the body, Knaus said he was going to call 911 but did not have a cell phone. He turned his vehicle around and asked another man at a parking area if he could borrow his phone.

The man, Donald Pridmore, corroborated his story with his testimony. Pridmore said he gave Knaus his phone and heard him report what he had seen. Tapes of the 911 call were played and introduced as state's evidence.

Knaus, who worked 20 years as a paramedic and is a nurse, said he returned to the body to see if he could help, but he could tell that she was dead. He waited for first responders to arrive and held his tongue for more than a year before he told police of the man he saw that morning on his way up the parkway.

‘Sworn I would never help them'

Knaus did not mention seeing the man in the truck until after he saw a photo of the defendant in August 2010, when it appeared on the Times-News website.

Newman asked why it took Knaus so long to tell that part of the story. Knaus said he tried to help police as much as he could at the scene, giving investigators a written statement and allowing them to search his truck. But when they started treating him like the main suspect, he said, he stopped talking.

"You did not say, ‘look, I wasn't involved; I saw a man down here on the bridge; he almost ran me over,'" Newman said. "You didn't say anything the next day. You didn't say anything the next week."

When he did say something, Newman said, it was to a lawyer, not the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.

"I had sworn I would not help the Buncombe County police department in any way, shape or form for any reason ever again," Knaus said. "They entered my house without a warrant and searched it."

Two days after Knaus found Carter's body, an article appeared in the Times-News about his treatment and frustration with investigators.

"That officer on the side of the road called my girlfriend who was just out of the hospital and he said, ‘I'm here on the side of the road with your boyfriend and his dead girlfriend.' He said, ‘what do you think about that?'" Knaus told the jury as some in the audience gasped.

"She was in the hospital for psychiatric problems, depression and attempted suicide, and that was the first thing she gets ... Now you know why I didn't talk to the police department."

In his opening statement Tuesday morning, Newman said that Glover's truck was spotted parked outside his residence between 6 and 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2009.

Cause of death

An autopsy report in 2009 revealed that Carter died of chop wounds to the head before her head was wrapped in a plastic material and a sheet, which was set on fire.

Medical examiners found burns to her head, upper chest and left upper extremity. She was five to six weeks pregnant at the time of her death, according to the autopsy.

The vehicle she purchased with Glover, according to search warrants, was observed on video surveillance pulling into a space at a truck stop on Asheville Highway about 17 minutes before her body was found nearly 15 miles away.

Blood and the victim's clothing were found in the vehicle, according to a statement in a warrant from Detective Joshua Rayment of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.

"The key in this trial in determining who killed Misty Carter can best be determined by one of the last pieces of communication she made by a text message to her sister at about 11:45 on Sunday night," Newman told the jury in his opening statement. "The person that murdered Misty Carter, ladies and gentlemen, is a person that she referred to as a client in that last text message.

"Misty Carter gave massages for money," Newman continued. For certain amounts of money, he said, "she would give massages in various states of undress," or "completely nude," and would "perform sexual acts."

"It is significant that her body was found completely unclothed because in her text message she said that she was with a client, in fact, giving massages," he said.

In the text message, Newman said, Carter told her sister she was waiting in a parking lot for a client.

"She tells her sister that she is with a client and has been since 8 o'clock and that he is paying her to spend additional time with her," he said. "The sister responds and asks, ‘Well, how did you meet this guy?' and she gives the name of Steve Green."

Newman said Green was Carter's "sugardaddy."

"In other words, he provided client leads to her. He gave her money. He gave her drugs," he said. "The evidence is also (going to show) that in the only interview that Mr. Green submitted to in this case — the only one — he acknowledged that he was very much in love with Misty Carter. In fact, he had written several love letters to her, multiple-page love letters. He also divulged that he had an apartment separate from his house in South Asheville, where he spent time alone with her."

Green lived in Haywood County, was married to a nurse and met Carter "when he sold cars over in West Asheville," Newman said.

‘Friends with benefits'

Newman said the relationship between Carter and Glover "can best be described as ‘friends with benefits.'"

He said Carter needed a place to stay in June 2009 and Glover opened his home. They were intimate the first two months they lived together, he said. But in the last two months, the relationship was more platonic.

"She had her boyfriends. He had his girlfriends. They saw other people," he said.

"The last time — the evidence will show in this case — that Mr. Glover saw or spoke to Misty Carter was Friday, Oct. 16, 2009," Newman added.

He said Carter was leaving to spend a weekend with her sister and the father of her unborn child, Dewayne Boyd. Over the weekend, Glover met a woman in Spartanburg, S.C., in an online chat room and drove down to spend the weekend with her, Newman said.

He added that Glover got home sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. and did "not leave the house that night."

Newman and Mundy told jurors that Carter's vehicle, a black Mitsubishi Eclipse she purchased with Glover, was spotted pulling into a space at the truck stop around 2:40 a.m., not 6:15 a.m. as noted in search warrants.

"Sometime between that text message at 11:45 at night and when her car was seen at 2:45 ... her body was taken up onto the parkway and dumped on the side of the road. The person that murdered Misty Carter, ladies and gentlemen, is that client that she was with," Newman told the jury.

The state contends the true culprit sits at the defense table.

"You're going to hear about pieces of a puzzle," Mundy told the jury. "Pieces of a puzzle is what this case is about. Each piece, standing alone, may seem at the time insignificant, may seem unimportant, but when you put all of the pieces together at the end of this case, we're going to ask you to look at the big picture."

He previewed some of the "pieces" the jury would gather: the car Carter purchased with Glover; the truck stop along Asheville Highway where it was parked; the house she shared with Glover, where evidence was found; and a "bag of trash" pulled from an Enmark gas station dumpster.

"You're going to hear how the defendant went to this Enmark gas station and threw a bag of trash in their dumpster. You're going to hear from the State Bureau of Investigation how they retrieved that bag, what they found, what they saw," he said.

After all of the pieces come together, Mundy told the jurors, "we're going to ask you to find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder."

Newman said his client cooperated with law enforcement every step of the way, submitting to five interviews, searches and DNA swabs.

"Ten months after Misty Carter's body was found on the parkway, my client was arrested and charged with her murder," he said. "There will be no evidence backing the charge that he murdered anyone."

To give jurors a "better understanding of the scene," Judge Alan Thornburg approved the defense's pretrial request for a "jury view" — a bus tour of three locations pertinent to the case. One stop on the trip Tuesday included the blue house Carter shared with Glover at 52 Piney Ridge Court, Hendersonville.

Another stop was the Asheville Highway truck stop near exit 44 where her vehicle was found. The final stop was at the place her body was discovered.

<p>Jermaine Deprie Glover, charged with the first-degree murder of his live-in girlfriend, whose body was found nude and partially burned on the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2009, entered the courtroom in a wheelchair Tuesday morning under the stony stares of the victim's family.</p><p>The prosecution contends that "pieces to a puzzle" will show 21-year-old Misty Lynn Carter was murdered by Glover, but Defense Attorney Greg Newman said she was killed by one of her massage clients. </p><p>Newman also argued that Glover, who suffers from diabetes and lost the lower half of his left leg in an amputation several years ago, could not have killed and discarded a "lady of about 200 pounds."</p><p>One of the state's first witnesses was Jerry Knaus, formerly of Fairview, who discovered Carter's body around 6:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 19, 2009 as he drove along the parkway to watch the sun rise. </p><p>Knaus told the jury that he passed the defendant as he drove up the parkway just before he found the body. He was driving a black F-150 truck. Just minutes before he saw the body, he said, he had a close call with another pickup truck. </p><p>He could not remember the color of the vehicle or its make and model, and testified that it was "pitch black" outside, but he did remember the face of the man in the other truck.</p><p>"We came not to a stop, but like ultra slow, and the person in that vehicle turned and looked straight at me," he said, adding that he was about 5 feet away and although it was "dark," headlights illuminated the man's face. </p><p>"They kind of looked right at me and I looked right at them too."</p><p>Knaus, who now lives in Port Charlotte, Fla., said a shorter passenger he could not identify was seated next to the man driving. He testified that the man behind the steering wheel looked just like the long-mustached "Poncho Villa" pictured at Papa's and Beer, a Mexican restaurant in Hendersonville.</p><p>Is the man you saw that night in the courtroom today? asked Assistant District Attorney Doug Pearson.</p><p>"Yes," Knaus testified, pointing a finger at the defendant.</p><p>Knaus said he saw Carter's body lying in a gravel pull-off area along the parkway between the bridge over Interstate 26 and the bridge over the French Broad River on his way up to Mount Pisgah from Fairview. </p><p>At first, he thought it was a deer in the road. As he drove closer, he said, he realized it was a naked female and that her head was "smoking."</p><p>After seeing the body, Knaus said he was going to call 911 but did not have a cell phone. He turned his vehicle around and asked another man at a parking area if he could borrow his phone. </p><p>The man, Donald Pridmore, corroborated his story with his testimony. Pridmore said he gave Knaus his phone and heard him report what he had seen. Tapes of the 911 call were played and introduced as state's evidence.</p><p>Knaus, who worked 20 years as a paramedic and is a nurse, said he returned to the body to see if he could help, but he could tell that she was dead. He waited for first responders to arrive and held his tongue for more than a year before he told police of the man he saw that morning on his way up the parkway.</p><p><b>'Sworn I would never help them'</b></p><p>Knaus did not mention seeing the man in the truck until after he saw a photo of the defendant in August 2010, when it appeared on the Times-News website.</p><p>Newman asked why it took Knaus so long to tell that part of the story. Knaus said he tried to help police as much as he could at the scene, giving investigators a written statement and allowing them to search his truck. But when they started treating him like the main suspect, he said, he stopped talking.</p><p>"You did not say, 'look, I wasn't involved; I saw a man down here on the bridge; he almost ran me over,'" Newman said. "You didn't say anything the next day. You didn't say anything the next week."</p><p>When he did say something, Newman said, it was to a lawyer, not the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office. </p><p>"I had sworn I would not help the Buncombe County police department in any way, shape or form for any reason ever again," Knaus said. "They entered my house without a warrant and searched it."</p><p>Two days after Knaus found Carter's body, an article appeared in the Times-News about his treatment and frustration with investigators. </p><p>"That officer on the side of the road called my girlfriend who was just out of the hospital and he said, 'I'm here on the side of the road with your boyfriend and his dead girlfriend.' He said, 'what do you think about that?'" Knaus told the jury as some in the audience gasped. </p><p>"She was in the hospital for psychiatric problems, depression and attempted suicide, and that was the first thing she gets ... Now you know why I didn't talk to the police department."</p><p>In his opening statement Tuesday morning, Newman said that Glover's truck was spotted parked outside his residence between 6 and 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2009.</p><p><b>Cause of death</b> </p><p>An autopsy report in 2009 revealed that Carter died of chop wounds to the head before her head was wrapped in a plastic material and a sheet, which was set on fire. </p><p>Medical examiners found burns to her head, upper chest and left upper extremity. She was five to six weeks pregnant at the time of her death, according to the autopsy.</p><p>The vehicle she purchased with Glover, according to search warrants, was observed on video surveillance pulling into a space at a truck stop on Asheville Highway about 17 minutes before her body was found nearly 15 miles away. </p><p>Blood and the victim's clothing were found in the vehicle, according to a statement in a warrant from Detective Joshua Rayment of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.</p><p>"The key in this trial in determining who killed Misty Carter can best be determined by one of the last pieces of communication she made by a text message to her sister at about 11:45 on Sunday night," Newman told the jury in his opening statement. "The person that murdered Misty Carter, ladies and gentlemen, is a person that she referred to as a client in that last text message.</p><p>"Misty Carter gave massages for money," Newman continued. For certain amounts of money, he said, "she would give massages in various states of undress," or "completely nude," and would "perform sexual acts."</p><p>"It is significant that her body was found completely unclothed because in her text message she said that she was with a client, in fact, giving massages," he said.</p><p>In the text message, Newman said, Carter told her sister she was waiting in a parking lot for a client. </p><p>"She tells her sister that she is with a client and has been since 8 o'clock and that he is paying her to spend additional time with her," he said. "The sister responds and asks, 'Well, how did you meet this guy?' and she gives the name of Steve Green."</p><p>Newman said Green was Carter's "sugardaddy." </p><p>"In other words, he provided client leads to her. He gave her money. He gave her drugs," he said. "The evidence is also (going to show) that in the only interview that Mr. Green submitted to in this case — the only one — he acknowledged that he was very much in love with Misty Carter. In fact, he had written several love letters to her, multiple-page love letters. He also divulged that he had an apartment separate from his house in South Asheville, where he spent time alone with her."</p><p>Green lived in Haywood County, was married to a nurse and met Carter "when he sold cars over in West Asheville," Newman said.</p><p><b>'Friends with benefits'</b></p><p>Newman said the relationship between Carter and Glover "can best be described as 'friends with benefits.'"</p><p>He said Carter needed a place to stay in June 2009 and Glover opened his home. They were intimate the first two months they lived together, he said. But in the last two months, the relationship was more platonic. </p><p>"She had her boyfriends. He had his girlfriends. They saw other people," he said.</p><p>"The last time — the evidence will show in this case — that Mr. Glover saw or spoke to Misty Carter was Friday, Oct. 16, 2009," Newman added. </p><p>He said Carter was leaving to spend a weekend with her sister and the father of her unborn child, Dewayne Boyd. Over the weekend, Glover met a woman in Spartanburg, S.C., in an online chat room and drove down to spend the weekend with her, Newman said.</p><p>He added that Glover got home sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. and did "not leave the house that night." </p><p>Newman and Mundy told jurors that Carter's vehicle, a black Mitsubishi Eclipse she purchased with Glover, was spotted pulling into a space at the truck stop around 2:40 a.m., not 6:15 a.m. as noted in search warrants.</p><p>"Sometime between that text message at 11:45 at night and when her car was seen at 2:45 ... her body was taken up onto the parkway and dumped on the side of the road. The person that murdered Misty Carter, ladies and gentlemen, is that client that she was with," Newman told the jury.</p><p>The state contends the true culprit sits at the defense table.</p><p>"You're going to hear about pieces of a puzzle," Mundy told the jury. "Pieces of a puzzle is what this case is about. Each piece, standing alone, may seem at the time insignificant, may seem unimportant, but when you put all of the pieces together at the end of this case, we're going to ask you to look at the big picture."</p><p>He previewed some of the "pieces" the jury would gather: the car Carter purchased with Glover; the truck stop along Asheville Highway where it was parked; the house she shared with Glover, where evidence was found; and a "bag of trash" pulled from an Enmark gas station dumpster.</p><p>"You're going to hear how the defendant went to this Enmark gas station and threw a bag of trash in their dumpster. You're going to hear from the State Bureau of Investigation how they retrieved that bag, what they found, what they saw," he said.</p><p>After all of the pieces come together, Mundy told the jurors, "we're going to ask you to find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder."</p><p>Newman said his client cooperated with law enforcement every step of the way, submitting to five interviews, searches and DNA swabs.</p><p>"Ten months after Misty Carter's body was found on the parkway, my client was arrested and charged with her murder," he said. "There will be no evidence backing the charge that he murdered anyone."</p><p>To give jurors a "better understanding of the scene," Judge Alan Thornburg approved the defense's pretrial request for a "jury view" — a bus tour of three locations pertinent to the case. One stop on the trip Tuesday included the blue house Carter shared with Glover at 52 Piney Ridge Court, Hendersonville.</p><p>Another stop was the Asheville Highway truck stop near exit 44 where her vehicle was found. The final stop was at the place her body was discovered.</p><p>Reach Weaver at emily.weaver@blueridgenow.com or 828-694-7867.</p>